Do monthly dividend stocks yielding about 7% pay off?
Short answer: Over ten years, the 13 monthly dividend stocks on Binance Stocks returned 8.1% a year with dividends reinvested, against 12.4% for a plain dividend ETF and 15.3% for the S&P 500. 7 of the 13 cut their dividend at least once, and the highest yields did worst.
A free report arrived by email: seven stocks that “pay you every single month”, ranked from safest to highest yield, averaging about 7%. Monthly checks sound like a salary. The question is whether these stocks actually pay off as an investment.
How we tested
- The rule was written and timestamped before any price or dividend data was pulled.
- Universe, chosen mechanically: every stock on Binance Stocks worth at least USD 1 billion that paid 12 or more dividends in each of 2023, 2024 and 2025. That gave 13 names.
- Total return with dividends reinvested, equal weight, rebalanced yearly, from October 2016 to September 2026, against SCHD (a plain US dividend ETF) and VOO (S&P 500).
- A dividend cut: a year in which total dividends per share fell more than 10%.
- Pass rule: return within 1 point a year of SCHD, and fewer than a quarter of the names cutting.
Results
| Basket | Return per year | Names with a dividend cut |
|---|---|---|
| All 13 monthly payers | 8.1% | 7 of 13 |
| The report’s seven | 6.7% | 4 of 7 |
| SCHD, plain dividend ETF | 12.4% | |
| VOO, S&P 500 | 15.3% |
The monthly payers trailed the plain dividend ETF by more than 4 points a year. Over ten years that is the difference between $100 growing to about $218 and to about $323.
Higher yield, worse outcome
| Yield today | Return per year | Names with a cut |
|---|---|---|
| 3.5% to 5.3% | 7.7% | none |
| 5.9% to 7.1% | 10.9% | 3 of 4 |
| 7.9% to 20.8% | 5.3% | 4 of 5 |
The stock with the highest yield, about 21%, lost 7% a year over the decade and cut its dividend in four separate years. A high yield is often the market pricing in the next cut.
The “safest” names behaved as promised on the payment side: the one with a 674-month record never cut. Its total return was 3.0% a year.
How the offer works
The report itself was the smaller story. One click in the email signed the reader up to a new daily newsletter without asking. The next page showed more reports; the button to take one was large and coloured, the way out a small grey underlined link. The reader’s email address appeared in the page address, where tracking scripts on the page can read it. A text-message alert sign-up followed in the welcome email. Each “free report” is a sign-up for another list.
Limits
- Only stocks that still trade today could enter, so failed monthly payers are missing and the real picture is likely worse.
- Taxes are not modelled. For readers outside the US, withholding tax takes a share of every dividend before it arrives.
- A “cut” counts special dividends. One lender’s 2020 cut was a pause in its extra payouts while its regular monthly dividend continued; without it, half of the names still cut.
- Two data problems were fixed before scoring, with the rule unchanged: dividend records missing on long date ranges, and a listing-day price jump caused by a reverse split.
Verdict
FAIL. Paying monthly changes when the money arrives; it does not add to it. These stocks paid less in total and cut more often than a plain dividend ETF, and the highest yields were the least reliable. Not financial advice.